FTFA:But they also got an unexpected problem: throngs of 'young people' who have daily overwhelmed the library's staff of eight and created a hot spot for trouble. There have been fights, thefts, and a host of problems inside and outside its doors.

Like anyone who's ever been to Murderpan is surprised by this. Seriously, if you're not in downtown, the Back Bay or around Kenmore Square, Boston is, in fact, hell on earth.

Murderpan, and most of the southern half of Boston for that matter, is full of people who got mad when Bill Cosby called them out for being bad parents - not because they're not, but because they got called on it. They're stereotypical, and rather than doing anything about it they just live with it and try to turn everywhere they go into Detroit.

I got permanently banninated from The Twelve Bens on Adams St. If they didn't like the fact that my friend had too much to drink and stripped down to his banana hammock, they won't like farkers either.

"I wouldn't send my kids there,'' said one, Anthony Mosely, who said he witnessed a verbal confrontation between two groups of teenagers in the library. "Kids are going to be kids, but you can't let stuff like that happen in a place like a library.''

FriarReb98:Like anyone who's ever been to Murderpan is surprised by this. Seriously, if you're not in downtown, the Back Bay or around Kenmore Square, Boston is, in fact, hell on earth.

NO its NOT, you jackass. I lived in Upham's Corner, Dudley and for YEARS and was down in Iggles all the time; I know this spot. its ghetto light.

you and the others shiatting your pants over mattypatty are dickless crackers.

i've lived in New Orleans, Brooklyn, Oakland and I've *been* to Detroit. Dorchester in't shiat. look at the crime rate, look at the murder rate; its nothing like a real bad city. there are street cleaners and they pick up the trash EVERY WEEK

20-30 years ago, Dot and the Bury were scary and run down, but Mumbles has done a good old job delivering to his 'people of the community' and those places are playgrounds compared to Detroit.

that library is no more out of control than a high school's front door at 3PM. This is a spook story, a SPOOK story if you get me, to titillate the mommys in Brookline.

Also, that girl? fark yeah. i'd bang her like a screen door in a hurricane. she is DELICIOUS. someone find her myspace for me, i need to know how many kids she's got.

Indeed. Computers with internet access are the problem, they attract people who don't care about the books or the learnin'. Our library got rid of their computers and all the homeless folks and teenagers skipping school went away.

Roxbury was too. Mattapan was until block busting, redlining, violence, "white flight" and the BBURG drove them out to Randolph (now Randapan), Sharon and other suburbs in the 60's and 70's. There was something like 90,000 Jews in Mattapan, Roxbury and Dorchester at one time. Now there's about 3,000.

Egleston Sq -Washington and Columbus Ave. its JP, not Mattapan, but I used to go down there when ALL of the windows were boarded up and a white boy was guaranteed at least one fight for showing up (if you didn't 'help a brother out'). Now its got coffee shops and shiat

Egleston Sq -Washington and Columbus Ave. its JP, not Mattapan, but I used to go down there when ALL of the windows were boarded up and a white boy was guaranteed at least one fight for showing up (if you didn't 'help a brother out'). Now its got coffee shops and shiat

I kind of assumed that's what you meant, but never heard that before. I grew up in JP, things in Eggy have been slowly improving since the train came down, but I don't know about coffee shops, maybe on Center St.

When I was a kid it was full-blown war around those parts, the Goyas, Mozart Park, Academy, etc.

FriarReb98:Murderpan, and most of the southern half of Boston for that matter, is full of people who got mad when Bill Cosby called them out for being bad parents - not because they're not, but because they got called on it. They're stereotypical, and rather than doing anything about it they just live with it and try to turn everywhere they go into Detroit.

\like i say in all these threads, Chris Rock was right.

Yeah, you and Chris Rock and Bill Cosby and Dave Chappelle, you're all on exactly the same page, I bet. I'm sure they'd be pleased to endorse your perspective on all things black. Your official license to tell jokes with the n-word in them will be in the mail shortly... signed by Chris Rock himself! It's only fair.

yeah dawg all you tuff guyz representin' da struggle here on Fark about all the 'hood' living you've done in Boston. Blue Hill Ave is a terrible place. Murdapan and Dorchester suck, and while it's racist to make a connection between the color of the people's skin there and the crappiness of the community, you can at least blame the thug culture and whatnot.

To The Escape Zeppelin!:Indeed. Computers with internet access are the problem, they attract people who don't care about the books or the learnin'. Our library got rid of their computers and all the homeless folks and teenagers skipping school went away.

I think this would be going too far the other way. I know that 99% of potential troublemakers who come through the doors will, in fact, just be troublemakers, but you'll always get that 1% who, for whatever reason, decided that since they're already here, they might as well check out these "book" things that libraries are supposed to be full of. What you could do instead is put the computer section right near the front--not directly in front of the doors so that non-potential-troublemakers have to push through the thick of it to get in and out, but right beside the doors--and then have the peaceful areas further back behind soundproofed walls. You know, designate a noisy half and a quiet half, with the noisy half being more convenient to reach.

Confession time: I haven't been to the library in... oh God, coming up on a year now. I stocked up on novels at their last couple of blowout basement sales, so I haven't been going for the fiction, and I usually prefer online nonfiction because it tends to be more up-to-date. I know it's never as in-depth, but I haven't been doing any research of late, so it just doesn't seem worth the bother of hauling my car-free ass through subzero weather for ten-year-plus out-of-date material. Yeah, it feels weird, but I did spend cashmoney on those blowout novels, so I feel obliged to read them first. Ninety percent of them are crap, but I'm still trying to figure out why Tinker got ditched. The naughty parts alone justify its existence; the attendant romp through the author's bizarre imagination is pure bonus.

Other than that, I guess they don't teach kids how to behave in a library anymore.

Be quiet, or get out.

Most people can grasp that concept by 3rd grade.

All of this, in spades, and doubled.

Librarians thinking they had to be "hip" by letting in all sorts of distractions has farked many libraries. We have one near here that's strictly old school: Be Quiet or Be Elsewhere- there is no shortage (in fact a fatal surplus) of noisy places.

A library is a quiet place for communing with friends who won't stay dead. I wish all those kids in that picture could have that gift. But I fear not.

Helen_Arigby:To The Escape Zeppelin!: Indeed. Computers with internet access are the problem, they attract people who don't care about the books or the learnin'. Our library got rid of their computers and all the homeless folks and teenagers skipping school went away.

I think this would be going too far the other way. I know that 99% of potential troublemakers who come through the doors will, in fact, just be troublemakers, but you'll always get that 1% who, for whatever reason, decided that since they're already here, they might as well check out these "book" things that libraries are supposed to be full of. What you could do instead is put the computer section right near the front--not directly in front of the doors so that non-potential-troublemakers have to push through the thick of it to get in and out, but right beside the doors--and then have the peaceful areas further back behind soundproofed walls. You know, designate a noisy half and a quiet half, with the noisy half being more convenient to reach.

This is more or less what the public libraries in the last two towns I've lived in have done. They've also established policies that bar troublemakers from the library after two warnings for disruptive behavior, stationed police officers at the entrance to keep the banned troublemakers out, and increased foot patrols through the library. Also, internet access is limited to 1 1/2 hours at a time, and you have to sign in at the circulation desk to get a passcode.

It's entirely possible to keep a public library with a large teen clientele from disintegrating into a mosh pit, but you have to have the will to keep the place clean and the funds to hire the personnel to do it. Volunteers can't; they're generally too easily intimidated. If the community can fund a building, they ought to fund the salaries to keep the building up.